Let's Hit The Road

Day 3 - July 30th

Today was the day we'd start the road trip, but we began it with a stroll around midtown Manhattan to find somewhere for breakfast. Predictably we ended up in Starbucks, but less predictably we also ended up right next to the Empire State Building. So, after breakfast we took the $20 elevator j

ourney up to the 86th floor, past yet another security check although early enough in the day to avoid queues. The view is pretty spectacular and makes you realise just how huge New York is. Apart from the coastline there's nothing but city as far as the eye can see.

With another tourist attraction ticked off our list we headed back to our hotel, checked out and then hailed a taxi to take us to the Hertz car rental on 13th street. Collecting the car was straightforward but then we had a minor panic as the sat-nav I'd borrowed from work refused to pick up our location and stayed resolutely locked on San Francisco airport. We hadn't bothered with a road atlas but our New York guidebook showed roughly where the entrance to the I-95 freeway was, so we headed off into the New York traffic hoping that we'd figure it out along the way. Amy's directions were spot on but we still breathed a sigh of relief when we got out of down-town and the sat-nav sprung to life. It turns out it just doesn't like all the skyscrapers.

Our first stop was Mystic, a seaside town in Conneticut, a

couple of hours north of New York. We ate lunch at Mystic Pizza, the restaurant where the film of the same name was set, and once again we made the mistake of ordering way too much food - two small pizzas when one between us would have been plenty, American portions strike again! After lunch we went to nearby Mystic Aquarium where I annoyed Amy by taking dozens of photos. The highlight of the visit was the wide variety of jellyfish, the penguins and a the Beluga whales (which are small by whale standards but still huge by any other measure).

From Mystic it was another hour to our B&B, located in leafy suburb of Providence. It's a large, century old house filled with flowery rugs and wallpaper and antique furniture and it felt like we'd travelled a million miles from our pokey, noisy New York hotel room.

When we arrived the cleaner hadn't quite finished, so we sat and had a cup of tea with the B&B owner, who grew up in Warwickshire, and a fellow guest from Toronto who'd already been at the B&B a few days. Once our room was ready we freshened up and then strolled into downtown to have a look around. It was 7pm on a Friday and the place was completely deserted, eerily so. We found one open bar where we stopped for a beer/cocktail then walked back toward the student area where things were slightly more lively. We settled on curry for dinner, it was easily the best Indian meal I've had in the US (which isn't saying much after previous disappointing outings in San Francisco and Vancouver) but not a patch on the curry we get back home.